Trying to get feel if ITIL is becoming reality or if it still off in the distance. here in WI, it just doesn't seem to be reality, there is some discussion but seems to becoming from trainers & consultants.

Not adverse, juat have been in the IT /Telecom side running ops for far too long, there have been any number of latest and greatest, TQM, six sigma and they all have come and gone. ITIL hasn't seemed to take hold in the US?

Just doesn't seem to be on the horizon or is it me and I'm looking in all the wrong places? Been to a lot of sites and see products with "ITIL compliant" and it seems more about marketing then anything else.

Yes I have read the foundations books and can't say it was a revelation, if you've been in a large environment, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot new?

I cannot judge the situation in the US, but I can assure you ITIL has been and is still growing in Europe.

The fact the Foundations book is no revelation should not be a surprise. Since ITIL is based on best practices, a lot of the typical aspects might already have been implemented in the companies you worked for in the past, not necessarily calling it "ITIL". However, there are a lot of companies that are still operating "à l'improviste" and for all those, ITIL can really be heaven on earth.

I would advise you to read it through and remember those things you didn't know before. Whether you call it ITIL or common sense, I think the result is far more important.

For the market in the Netherlands, I agree with Tyson. ITIL has a strong presence here. One more thing: there is no such thing as "ITIL-compliancy" (you are right in that point Wireed). As ITIL is "only" a best practice, you cannot realy be compliant to it. Nor for organisations, not for tools. The only certification is on a personal level: ITIL foundation versus the practicioners versus ITIL service management ("red badge").

ITIL within the US is most definately growing. Agreed most organizations have an aspect or two of the best practices already in place but not necessarily across all disciplines. Our few but big companies here locally are implementing this as we speak. I'm not sure of larger companies there in WI that would be currently implementing but of companies in an around that area that i am aware of are under going implmentations are Haworth, State Farm and Pfizer(i think) just to name a few. So if it's not there yet it will be soon. May want to see if there is a local chapter of itsmf there to checkin with.

I thought I had already posted a reply to this but must have accidentally lost it when I thought I had hit submit...

If you look at research published by major research organizations such as Gartner, Forrester, etc., you will find that ITIL is definitely growing in the US. It's moving slowly but it's definitely moving.

In many ways, it is a fad, just like RUP, Six Sigma, TQM, etc. When things are new, people do tend to "flock" to them. However, there is good in all of it so I believe the core principles in ITIL are a good thing. Are you already doing them? Sure. Are many other companies already doing them? Sure. What I believe ITIL does, for the first time, is simply to start to publicly try and make it all look and feel consistent.

However, like all fads, there will eventually be something new to come out and try and improve upon it. For now, though, it gives enterprises a consistent framework for starting to get their production support and production operations under control. A gentleman from DSA that I recently spoke with said it best (and I apologize for not quoting him 100% accurately)... "If you need to pick religion, you can choose to start from scratch and build your own or you can simply leverage the values and principles available by an existing one. You can definitely do worse than to leverage what has already been put in place and is widely accepted by an established religion."

Perhaps ITIL is a fad, to be displaced by ISO20000 soon, but the underlying move to service management is a real paradigm shift, a much-abused term actually used correctly here IT is growing up and ITIL represents a phase of that growth (teenage?). There is something really fundamental going on here, around professionalism and engineering and quality. There is a shift from technology to process and from geek priesthood to customer service, from cowboys to accountability. ITIL may be imperfect and it may be transient but lets not belittle it too much

This sounds like a fair assessment. However, the problem lies in that all of IT is not maturing together. ITIL represents a maturity of the "back office" of IT (Production support and operations). However, the entire back office exists because of the front office of IT (analysis, planning, design, engineering, implementation & construction, deployment/distribution, installation, instantiation, verification, and so much more). What makes ITIL a truly vulnerable target is that when someone takes the time to mature the front end of IT (which constantly chases fads... RUP, Extreme Programming, RAD, GROOVE, etc.), the back end will have no choice but to align with the front end. This means that the enterprises that are smart enough to understand how to mature their front end processes could essentially "undo" a great deal of what ITIL has put in place. This will be an expensive and painful process, since pieces of ITIL will become deep rooted/entrenched and will not undo themselves, easily.

Also, there will eventually be a smarter fad that will come about and that will be the one that has a premise that IT should eliminate itself. ITIL has a hidden principle that implies strength and stabilization in the IT department (which implies a silo!). Wise leaders know that a great deal of IT is not their core competency and, therefore, a huge expense. Hence, I'll bet that the next fad that comes along will have something to do with the reduction of the IT footprint. I already see it with the new paradigm called "Software-as-a-Service" (SaaS). Literally, large sections of IT (infrastructure, resources, services, etc.) can be instantly outsourced to SaaS providers. It's still a long way from outsourcing all of IT but it's the beginning. SaaS providers are becoming IT utility companies, offering more and more pieces of IT behind the abstraction of nothing more than a browser. Who knows? Maybe, SaaS is the next great fad?

Having experienced the usual suspicion from the people involved in following process, with regards to ITIL It became abundantly clear that the real issue was that ITIL or any guidance (best practice) requires discipline. People usual resist any controls (its Human nature). In fact ITIL, or the use of the term, has been ‘outlawed’. What we have done is focus on what the vision is ‘World Class Service Management’. This also moves away from the technology, to the customer and the service being delivered. I agree it’s about talking the same language, getting out of the silo. Version 3 of ITIL is moving closer to the business, your business, but it’s how you implement it that’s important. IT is an enabler, not the centre of the Universe.

Returning to the orignal question regarding the growth of ITIL in North America, it often requires a Major Player to demand ITIL from its IT organizations and vendors. One such initiative is underway in the Automotive Sector: General Motors has basically outsourced most of its IT operations to a dozen or more key vendors called Performing Suppliers such as IBM, AT&T, EDS, Compuware, Cap Gemini, etc. One of the requirements to be an Integrated Performing Supplier is the implementation of ITIL. The requirement is subsequently cascaded to the Tier Two vendors of these supporting suppliers globally. So ITIL is in the process of getting quite a boost, not only in North Americal but where ever GM IT and Telecommunications are located.

SOX is also driving ITIL. How do you audit IT? COBIT. How do you put processes in place to pass a COBIT audit? ITIL (among others).

UKVIKING: to be pedantic about it, ISO20000 does indeed replace ITIL. It "aligns with" ITIL but it does not require ITIL for its definition - it stands alone. The IT Skeptic reckons that just as soon as someone compiles equivalent best practice process documentation for ISO20000, ITIL is a goner

I have sat and passed the itSMF ISO 20000 Consultants course here in the UK

ISO 20000 standard is aligned with ITIL. PERIOD.

Therefore, ITIL is not being replaced by ISO 20000 but, ISO 20000 provides a means to for a end to end service to be accredited / certified / proven that best practice is being used for an organization's service which has been audit and certified to be ISO 20000.

In order to get the certification, the service being evaluated needs to meet the requirements in all 16 disciplines in ISO 20000 .

These are the 16 parts of ISO 20000 - which 10 in bold are the ITIL processes.
The 3 processes which are not ITIL - Supplier, Service Reporting & info Security - are ISO 20000 as well as ISO27001 or other standards_________________John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Not being qualified in ISO20000 I'll take your word for it. But I think the disagreement is one of semantics. Does ISO20000 standard define those processes by saying: "for the defintion of this part of ISO20000 refer to the ITIL blue book" or does it say "these processes are made up of...."

I think the latter. Therefore ISO20000 may be modelled on ITIL but it stands alone, entirely independent of ITIL. It is not dependant on ITIL for its definition. Right now, in practice, one refers to the ITIL doc to find out how to achieve ISO20000. If I wrote the equivalent of the red and blue books , but the cover said ISO20000 and laid out the "how to" for all 16 processes, then ITIL would be entirely redundant. I think.